Author: Meghan Froy

This is a Paid Post by Jewish National Fund-USA. The Nosher’s editorial staff had no role in its production. With Rosh Hashanah arriving on the heels of Labor Day, and it likely being your first in-person Jewish holiday gathering since the start of the pandemic, it’s not too early to start thinking about ways to […]

The last time we looked in on Rav Nahman (Sukkah 10) he was hosting colleagues in a sukkah that, according to their view, was not a legal sukkah. On today’s daf, we find him in another awkward situation: There was a certain old woman who came before Rav Nahman. She said to him: The exilarch and all the sages […]

The mishnah that kicks off today’s conversation contains a helpful concession to the human need for creature comfort: All seven days of Sukkot, a person renders his sukkah his permanent residence and his house his temporary residence. If rain fell, at what point is he permitted to vacate the sukkah? When the congealed dish will spoil. There is […]

When was the last time you felt #blessed to attend a Zoom meeting? For me, the answer is almost always “Just a few days ago!” That’s because once a month, I join the virtual gathering of a local broad-based coalition of faith institutions here in Mississippi. It’s always inspiring – and recently reminded me of […]

Sukkot, apparently, is a difficult festival for the bigamous. At least, that is what Rabbi Eliezer thinks. On today’s daf, he receives two questions from the steward of King Agrippas. Here is the second: And the steward further asked Rabbi Eliezer: For someone like me who has two wives, one in Tiberias and one in Tzippori, […]

Consider the gazelle, the beautiful and swift creature that we encounter frequently in the eight chapters of Song of Songs: “Hark! My beloved! There he comes, leaping over mountains, bounding over hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or like a young stag.” (2:8)  Why is the gazelle accorded such a prominent place in the […]

Having wrapped up its conversation about using an elephant as the wall of a sukkah, the rabbis now consider an even wackier use for the side of an animal: to write a divorce document. I kid you not. The rules and procedures for a Jewish divorce (about which we’ll learn in Tractate Gittin) are derived by the […]

I love today’s page because it reads a bit like something dreamed up by Dr. Seuss:  Can you build your sukkah on a boat? Can you build it on a goat?  On a cart or in a tree?  Sukkot is so much fun you see! OK, the goat one is not on today’s page — […]

Once in a while, we come across an unfamiliar word in the Talmud that makes us sit back and think: “Ooh, I wonder what that means!”  That happens in a mishnah on today’s daf: A sukkah that is meduvlelet and whose shade exceeds its sunlight is fit.  So what does meduvelet mean exactly? The Gemara attempts to figure that […]

Chef Rebecca King loves being a bad Jew. She has done so since her days at Jewish summer camp. “We [my friends and I] were like, ‘We want to be bad Jews! We want to get bacon,” she told The Nosher recently via phone interview. “I just remember always, like, calling myself a bad Jew… […]